The great mirror fields of California and Nevada are a vision of the future. No other form of new energy captures the imagination, inspires and allows us to understand the coming transition to a clean economy as easily as vast solar arrays in the desert.
Brilliant work on solar power is being done at both the University of NSW in Sydney and at the Australian National University in Canberra. The world's largest solar concentrator - a form of solar power station - is being built near Mildura.
Crucible Carbon, a small firm in Newcastle, is leading the world in developing biochar, a technology that effectively captures carbon for between 500 and 3000 years in blackened crop waste or wood residue. These mini charcoal pellets are then sown back into the soil, where field trials around the world have shown an increase in crop yields of between 25 and 30 per cent.
The sense that there is no way out is historically incorrect and gives people no reason to harness their own ingenuity. That is why Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong's statement last week that south-east Australia's worst heat wave since 1908 was "climate change in action" was so dangerous. It was unsupported, and it said to people that all action is futile.
Climate change is both real and significant. It is not, however, proved or disproved by a single weather event in a single country. The progressive pattern over time on a global scale provides the evidence.
Most important, it is not hopeless. The passage to a clean economy deals with both the challenge of clean energy and also energy security.
About 50 per cent of the world's emissions come from electricity and related energy production, about 20 per cent from agriculture and deforestation of the world's great rainforests, and about 20 per cent from the different forms of transport.
There are three waves of reform that define the future economy.
First, there must be - and over time there will be - a clean energy revolution. We begin this revolution with the task of cleaning up the 80 per cent of Australia's power coming from coal-fired power stations. The construction of two clean coal power stations, which reduce emissions by 90 per cent, is simply indispensable.
China and India will not close down the 800 power stations they are building. But they just may agree to clean them up if the technology being developed in Australia is proven and shared. This may well be our biggest contribution to our grandchildren.
We continue the revolution by entwining the inspiring technologies of solar, tidal and geothermal power with gas, which generates energy at up to 70 per cent less emissions than current power production.
The second wave of the reform is a green carbon initiative that aims to capture 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from our trees and soils by 2020. The best soils are laden with carbon. As one farmer said to me recently, he can smell good soil; feel it, touch it, and know that the infusion of carbon boosts the health of his soil and his farm productivity. To make this happen, farmers have to be given incentives for lifting their soil productivity.
Rather than being the villains - as some would have it - and buying them out, our farmers offer us a way to advance our landscape, protect our food security and help cleanse our air.
Third, the way we drive will change. Eventually, most of our vehicles will be powered by electricity, but that transition will be a slow one and will work only if the original source of energy is clean. In the intervening generation, we should consider whether the real Australian initiative is the gas Commodore or Fairlane. Perhaps we should be working with the manufacturer here in Australia to build parts of their fleets with the lower emissions gas technology.
Tomorrow will arrive. Unlike the great cholera epidemics of the 19th century, today we know the problem and can see the solution being built in places such as Newcastle, Sydney and Mildura. The course of human history is never easy, but in the midst of the current gloom we can still see the foundations for the clean economy of the future.
Greg Hunt is the federal shadow minister for climate change, environment and water.
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